PMO mulls Wynne meeting as Ring of Fire fight widens

The public spat between the Ontario and federal governments over the beleaguered Ring of Fire mining proposal is threatening to push the project into further disarray.

Premier Kathleen Wynne still doesn’t know if she’ll get a chance to speak with the prime minister about the project next week after her office sent a request to discuss a rescue plan earlier this month.

For their part, the feds say they’re unhappy with the way Queen’s Park went to the media with the plan without first talking to them about it.

“We look forward to the province moving forward in a bit more of a collaborative way and we would have appreciated a little more collaboration from the province with regards to their proposals,” said Greg Rickford, the minister of state in charge of the Ring of Fire, in an email statement late Monday.

When Rickford’s office was asked about any coming meetings with Ontario Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle, his spokesperson wouldn’t answer.

The proposal that has Ottawa ticked off is the creation of a development corporation for the Ring of Fire region, which lies near James Bay in northern Ontario away from any existing roads, railways or electrical infrastructure.

The development corporation, which Wynne unveiled to media two weeks ago, would serve as a means to resolve two critical issues for the Ring of Fire project: providing public funding to make the mineral projects economically feasible and getting First Nations in the region on board.

As for public infrastructure, opening the Ring of Fire would require a transportation corridor that would link the heavily forested region with the highways and Canadian Pacific railway near Lake Superior.

Cliff’s Natural Resources – a U.S. mining and refining company that wants to develop the first and largest of the planned chromite mines – also needs hundreds of megawatts of power. But due to the costs of these links and the fact that they will serve the public interest by hooking up with First Nation communities that are currently only accessible by plane, Cliffs wants public cash to pay for them.

It’s unclear how much the transportation corridor and other infrastructure will cost, though a House of Commons committee heard in 2012 that the road or railway’s route will be a key price determinant.

The combined spending on the mine, the refining operations and the infrastructure will be in the vicinity of $3.5 billion, said William Boor, Cliffs senior vice-president of global ferroalloys, in testimony to the committee in February 2012.

As for First Nations in the area, their displeasure with the project’s regulation has been known for years.

In November 2011, the Matawa First Nations – an umbrella group of nine aboriginal communities – filed a judicial review of the environmental assessment being run out of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency on the basis that the federal regulator was proceeding with too small an assessment.

That put a serious wrench in Ring of Fire boosters because it showed just how unpredictable Ontario is as a mining district because of unresolved questions over aboriginal rights.

In June of this year, Cliffs announced it was stopping all the work it was doing to prepare for the environmental assessment.The province began providing attention to try and put the problem the rest.

Over the past year, Ontario and the Matawa First Nation have put together negotiating teams – with former Liberal leader and MP Bob Rae on the Matawa side – to decide how to proceed with the mining.

In September, the Matawa First Nations dropped their judicial review.The progress wasn’t enough, however, to please Cliff’s.

Last Wednesday the firm announced it was shutting down the project indefinitely, closing its Toronto and Thunder Bay offices as well as its exploration site. Cliffs blamed the “uncertain timeline and risks associated with the development of necessary infrastructure” for the shutdown.

On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper distanced his government from the Ring of Fire.

“This is a project that is primarily under provincial jurisdiction because ultimately resources belong to the provinces and resource development is a provincial responsibility,” he said at a media event when asked about the Cliffs pullout.

That’s a long way from the government’s original take on the Ring of Fire. Treasury Board president Tony Clement, who was in charge of the Ring of Fire until this summer, once called it Canada’s next oilsands. The 2013 budget promised $4.4 million for training programs in the Ring of Fire.

As of late Tuesday, an official in Wynne’s office says they still don’t know if a visit to Ottawa on Dec. 5 will include a discussion with Harper on the Ring of Fire. The PMO declined to comment.

“The Premier’s Office has requested a meeting and we will reply in due course through the proper channels, not media,” wrote Carl Vallee, Harper’s press secretary, in an email.